This blog on Texas education contains posts on accountability, testing, college readiness, dropouts, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues with additional focus at the national level.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

There are now more Spanish speakers in the U.S. than in Spain

The United States has the second highest number of Spanish speakers
in the world—more than Spain and second after Mexico, according to a report published this week by the Instituto Cervantes.
It’s a finding that confirms the importance of Spanish in the U.S.
and the importance of the U.S. in the Spanish-speaking world, a level of
significance that will only rise in the future.
About 470 million people in the world speak Spanish as their native
language; another 89 million speak the language to some level. Mexico,
with 121 million Spanish speakers, represents far and above the largest
population of Spanish speakers, while the U.S. has 53 million Spanish
speakers (41 million of those native speakers).
The two North American countries are followed by Colombia (48 million), Spain (47 million), and Argentina (42 million).
By 2050, the U.S. will overtake Mexico as the largest
Spanish-speaking country in the world, the report predicts, thanks to
increased population growth in Latino communities. More than half of the
country’s population growth between 2000 and 2010 came from Latinos,
the report says, and more than 73 percent of Latino families in the U.S.
speak Spanish in their home.
The report also explores the impact of Spanish on the internet: it’s
the third top language used on the web, after English and Chinese. It’s
also the number two language on Facebook, the number two language on
Wikipedia in terms of visits, and the number three language on Twitter
after English and Japanese.